Pan Endemic Series: Nasreen Khan-Small Rebellions

Since moving to the United States, Khan has been working in art and poetry as a way to connect with the immigration experience. She frequently highlights and references the places she comes from: “I grew up in West Africa and Indonesia, my father is half Afghan, half Russian, and my mom is Filipino, Chinese, Spanish, and Indigenous.” In this piece, Khan uses woodburning to inscribe symbols on a table she created with discarded materials. Using symbology, she tells the story of her life milestones: adolescence, immigration, marriage, motherhood, divorce, and homeownership. The pandemic gave us the time we wanted and time we didn’t — to reflect on the past and what we want to accomplish in the future. Khan’s Small Rebellions helps bring us together as we experience the same milestones, the same pause. 

The Pan Endemic videos are stand-alone commissioned artworks commissioned by Big Car Collaborative. Tube Factory artspace, our commissioning contemporary art museum was closed to the public from March 2020 until April 2021 — with limited hours and openings since then. The pandemic is still raging. And 659,472 Americans have died due to COVID-19. With all of the isolation, sickness, and death — our nation and world has gotten no rest from physical or social calamities. These works and others to come are an effort to help process what’s happening and see how certain individuals are experiencing and thinking about life. The goals are to help create a path for empathy and understanding despite our differences, to support visual artists, share their work with the public, and give artists a platform to help process shared and personal events in relation to the pandemic. This series is made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.